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NEI Research News

Thanks to the work of NEI scientists and grantees, we’re constantly learning new information about the causes and treatment of vision disorders. Get the latest updates about their work — along with other news about NEI.

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Learning how transplanted neurons fit in

As scientists move closer to testing regenerative therapies for eye disease, techniques are needed to monitor transplanted cells as they integrate with host tissues.

Living Retina Achieves Sensitivity and Efficiency Engineers Can Only Dream About

In a pair of papers on retinal structure, Duke University neurobiologists have shown that the rigors of natural selection and evolution have shaped the retinas in our eyes just as this theory of optimization would predict.
Calcium-rich foods include milk, yogurt and cheese, as well as non-dairy sources such as kale, white beans and sesame seeds.

Blind People Can’t See Color but Understand It the Same Way as Sighted People

Questioning the belief that that people born blind could never truly understand color, a team of cognitive neuroscientists demonstrated that congenitally blind and sighted individuals actually understand it quite similarly.
Map of India

Vision symposium celebrates 15 years of joint India-U.S. research

Members of the Indo-U.S. Vision Research Collaborative Program gathered virtually to look back on the program’s genesis and accomplishments and to plot the program’s future.
Scientists in the laboratory

Retinoblastoma resource: Researchers create more accurate research model

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have created a laboratory model for studying retinoblastoma driven by inherited mutations in the RB1 gene.
Scientist looking in a microscope

Retina ‘hardwired’ to predict path of moving objects

Neural circuits in the primate retina can generate the information needed to predict the path of a moving object before visual signals even leave the eye, UW Medicine researchers demonstrate in a new paper.
Neurons (green) and their supporting astrocytes (red), created in a petri dish from stem cells.

Cell-replacement Therapies for Visual System Disorders

Two translational studies at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute are targeting photoreceptors and retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) to restore vision through regeneration of the retina. The research is funded by the NEI Audacious Goals Initiative.
Two hat-shaped objects, one pointing towards the viewer (concave) and one away from the viewer (convex)

Scientists uncover how decisions about what we see are relayed back through the brain

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered that decisions based on visual information is broadcast widely to neurons in the visual system, including to those that are not being used to make the decision.

Brain’s ‘memory center’ needed to recognize image sequences but not single sights

A new MIT study of how a mammalian brain remembers what it sees shows that while individual images are stored in the visual cortex, the ability to recognize a sequence of sights critically depends on guidance from the hippocampus.
Schematic of photoreceptors and bipolar cells in the retina.

Scientists discover gene therapy provides neuroprotection to prevent glaucoma vision loss

A form of gene therapy protects optic nerve cells and preserves vision in mouse models of glaucoma, according to research supported by NIH’s National Eye Institute. The findings suggest a way forward for developing neuroprotective therapies for glaucoma.